Culture

Ambient denotes something that you don’t have to pay attention to in order to enjoy but which is still seductive enough to be compelling if you choose to do so momentarily.

Once a dominant art form, theater ceded its cultural primacy a long ago. People still produce and even write excellent plays and musicals, even today, but it’s no longer the primary vehicle for cultural expression and innovation. It’s a niche. Similarly, film, fashion, literature, or even music as we once knew them are no longer the primary mediums... See more

Consider film and television, an easy target for cultural pessimists, and for good reason. The signs of decay are hard to ignore. If it’s not the slurry of superhero blockbusters, remakes and reboots, then it’s the straight-to-streaming slop. The familiar three-act structure, that is the craft of screenwriting, seems mysteriously missing from even... See more

The passive engagement of ambient television is a boon for streaming services, which just want you to keep binging so that you feel your subscription is justified.

On one hand, we have a booming Creator Economy, with an ever-expanding democratization of tools for production to anyone with an idea. So much so, that according to 1,000 surveyed Americans by ZINE, 86% of people believe there is an overwhelming amount of entertainment available today.

Yet meanwhile on the other hand, we seem to have also found... See more

Mainstream offerings are dominated by sensationalist non-fiction, formulaic and #BookTok-approved YA, and an endless parade of self-help. The few compelling books still being published for mainstream audiences occupy niche spaces, without the broad public engagement they once enjoyed. If intellectuals have always complained about the fragmentation... See more

The only way to define "progress" in culture is to draw clear lines between entertainment and art, something that has become extremely unpopular. This, however, is not just a rhetorical flaw in the argumentation about decline — but a core reason for the decline itself.

Late 20th century media was a universe of legible, cohesive objects—films, books, shows, albums, people—which audiences largely experienced as complete entities, not necessarily due to anyone’s preference but because this was the most practical way to read them. Today’s media is a tangle of streams, flows, and feeds that mingle promiscuously and... See more